Friday, April 04, 2014

Until All That Was Left Were The Bones

They gathered in knots inside and outside the state’s largest newspaper, trading information in subdued tones. Copy editors and advertising reps. Reporters and clerks. Veterans of three decades and 20-somethings new to the business.

The layoffs imposed at The Star-Ledger today cut across all departments, decimating some and taking substantial chunks out of others. In all, 167 staffers — one third of the newspaper’s non-unionized employees — will lose their jobs.

In a newsroom of 156 — including reporters, editors, photographers, videographers and support staff — 40 positions will be cut, including one job left vacant by the recent departure of a staff writer. Some 250 unionized employees are not affected.

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Another 124 full- and part-time jobs were eliminated at the company’s weekly newspapers and at the dailies in Trenton, Easton, and South Jersey. At NJ.com, 15 of 77 employees were let go. The day’s toll across all Advance properties came to 306 layoffs.

In Newark, the losses cast a pall through The Star-Ledger building as employees learned their fates. Among the newsroom casualties: the remaining full-time business staff and multiple positions in sports, features, photos and news.

"It’s been a gut-wrenching day for the entire staff, and an obviously devastating one for those who have been laid off," said Amy Ellis Nutt, who won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2011 and who remains with the paper. "We saw this coming for some time, but you’re never fully prepared. The sad fact is, when all is said and done, The Star-Ledger will be much diminished for the loss of so many of our colleagues."

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Most people I know in the writing game who manage to keep body and soul together does so by writing under a profitable brand they established +30 years ago, or through the largess of a patron, whether that be a spouse working full-time to pay the bills, or a full-time tenured teaching gig which allows lots of paid free time to write, or some unholy pact with the New York Times that makes it possible to crank out bilge and afford a mansion. Just about everyone else has pulled up stakes and getting out.

At the same moment in history, there is an infinite amount of money sloshing around in political universe for slashing and burning and for creating swill like this:

2 comments:

RoninMichigan
said...

Can't help thinking that somewhere in Trenton that Fat Fuck is laughing and dancing every time he thinks about about there being less local coverage of his dirty deeds. Lord knows the national coverage is not interested in exposing him to further negative press. The Bastards!